Editor’s Note: This is the first article in a new series about emerging technologies and businesses that cater to the aging population.

By Brian Goslow
BOSTON —
Just as Americans have finally accepted the virtues of exercise as a way to keep the body in shape, evidence suggests the brain also can benefit from a good old-fashioned workout.

“Ten years ago, nobody in retirement was doing yoga and Pilates,” said Randalynn Kaye of Wyndemere Senior Living Campus in Wheaton, Ill. “Now it’s part of everybody’s process in keeping physically fit. Brain exercise is going to be the yoga and Pilates for the baby-boomer generation.”

Companies are beginning to cash in with a slew of games and programs designed to keep the brains of baby boomers strong and help dementia and Alzheimer’s patients be mentally active.

“There’s been a lot of excitement about these kinds of programs,” said Paul Raia, the Alzheimer’s Association Massachusetts Chapter’s director of patient care and family support. “Most of the people in the field feel strongly that if you exercise the mind, you’re going to keep it intact for a longer period of time.”

Vigorous Mind and PositScience are two companies that offer brain exercises. The programs are conducted on cognitive computer software products.

MindFit, marketed by Vigorous Mind, a West Newton-based company, tests users in 14 cognitive areas over three initial 20-minute sessions before the software tailors a personalized training program based on individual strengths and weaknesses.

Users follow a three-time-a-week, 20-minute schedule of exercises to enhance and encourage working memory, short-term memory, name recall, eye-to-hand coordination, multi-tasking, photographic memory, time estimation and response time.

“The levels are adjusted after eight weeks so it’s not too difficult and you don’t get too bored,” said Vigorous Mind CEO Yuval Malinsky. After three eight-week sessions, the results are gathered in a “task pool” that allows infinite use of the program.

MindFit’s “Inside and Outside” task trains the user to divide his or her attention between two or more stimuli at a fast pace.

“Two in One” challenges users to match the color of a moving ball with a similar color on one of four surrounding walls. By the time the user catches on, the screen breaks in two to build dual tasking skills. The most difficult exercise, “Picasso,” requires memorizing an abstract design and reassembling it after its pieces are scrambled.

“The software always tends to stretch the individual but not stress the individual,” said Dr. Steve Wetzner, Vigorous Mind’s vice president of medical affairs. “It affects multiple abilities — hand-eye coordination, divided attention and image recognition, all exercises that require concentration.”

MindFit was designed in Israel by psychologist Dr. Shlomo Breznitz, former president of Haifa University. Vigorous Mind introduced the product into the U.S. market last summer. The Golden Living Center in West Newton was one of its first customers. Orit Shavit, the center’s Alzheimer’s care unit director at the time, built a “brain gym” using computers and several copies of MindFit purchased through a donation from a local businessman.

The youngest patient, a man in his early 60s who suffered from cognitive impairment as a result of an automobile accident, reported his memory had improved after using the program. “It gave him a zest, a push to enjoy life more and be more upbeat and improve his mood and well-being,” Shavit said. Most participants were Alzheimer’s patients 75 to 85. “With them, it was less the improvement of the memory (that staff noticed) but more toward an improvement in behavior and moods.”

The Alzheimer’s Associa-tion Massachusetts estimates there are 400,000 residents here who have the disease. Nationwide, over 5 million people are affected, including an average of one in every eight people over 65. That includes approximately 200,000 to 500,000 people with the early stages of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

For those in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, it’s important to interact with programs such as MindFit and Brain Fitness as soon as possible. “They’re going to slow the progression,” Raia said. “They’re not going to be able to bring back cognitive skills that have been lost already, but by using these kinds of games on a regular basis, over time, most people in the field think they’ll hold onto the remainder of their cognitive skills for a longer period of time.”

The stimulation causes the brain to use adjacent undamaged neurons to compensate for those already damaged. “We see early-stage patients who do this on a religious basis, almost, appearing to hold their own.”

Raia expects the demand for cognitive software products to grow with the aging of baby boomers. “They’ll want products to keep their minds healthy.”

Clinical evidence has found these programs not only preserve the mind but also can cause brain cells to build new connections between neurons in the brain that weren’t there before.

“The more connectors you have, the better off you’re going to be in terms of protecting yourself down the road from a variety of diseases that can cause dementia,” Raia said.

Debra Hill of Braintree purchased MindFit for her son, Matthew, 26, who suffered a traumatic brain injury after a motorcycle accident two years ago that left him with short-term memory loss. “It definitely strengthens his mind, especially in his ability to process time,” she said. “He has progressed from the point where he couldn’t remember what he had for breakfast and now he can. He now is up drinking coffee on his own, remembers where everything is in the house and remembers to read the newspaper where he wasn’t able to before.”

Residents at the Wyndemere Senior Living Campus recently began using Brain Fitness 2.0, a software program marketed by PositScience of San Francisco. Brain Fitness uses sounds to “teach” the brain to identify words more rapidly through exercises including “Match It!” that is similar to the old “Concentration” TV game show in format; “High or Low,” where users identify a range of sound frequencies; and “Listen and Do,” a brain-strengthening game. Like MindFit, it tests users before creating a series of exercises based on individual skill levels.

Wyndemere recently graduated its first Brain Fitness class of 12 residents. Initially, some were skeptical about making a lengthy time commitment to the activity while others had a computer phobia. “In those instances, a simple how-to-use-a-mouse session was needed,” said Kaye, marketing director for the facility. Approximately 100 people between 70 and 90 have signed up for the program.

Staff began to see positive changes within three weeks. “One resident said, ‘I can now remember the names of everybody in my hallway and I could never remember them before,’” Kaye said. After the first month, participants showed a 75 percent improvement in their test scores. After the 24-week cognitive program, some of their minds were calculated at being 20 years younger. “It’s not like they’re going to become Einstein through this program, but you can see things change,” Kaye said. “They feel more self-confident and are more likely to engage in social conversation.”
For more information on MindFit, visit vigorousmind.com; for more information on PositScience’s Brain Fitness 2.0, visit positscience.com